6. Thus to the members of the Bulgarian regency council during a conversation at Klessheim Palace on March 16, 1944, cited by Hillgruber, Staatsmanner II, p. 377. In the same conversation Hitler remarked that “this war can be waged all the more resolutely the less we imagine that there are any other ways to end it”; ibid., p. 376.
7. The order was couched in the form of a letter that read as follows: “Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility of extending the authorization of physicians to be specified by name so that patients reasonably considered to be incurably ill may, after the most serious consideration of the state of their sickness, be granted a mercy death. Adolf Hitler.” Cf. IMT XXVI, p. 169. However, the euthanasia program could not be carried out to the extent intended, chiefly because of the protests from the churches that soon began.
8. Report of the Security Service (SD) for Domestic Questions dated January 8, 1940, cited in Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, pp. 34 f.
9. Address to the divisional commanders, December 12, 1944; cf. Heiber, Lagebesprechungen, p. 718. Also Hitlers zweites Buch, p. 138. Hitler’s various efforts before the outbreak of the war to provide himself with an alibi against the charge of war guilt were so transparent that they proved worthless. Later, explaining his offers for a solution to the questions of Danzig and the Polish Corridor during the last days of August, Hitler himself said bluntly: “I needed an alibi, especially for the German people, to show them that I had done everything possible to preserve peace.” Cf. Schmidt, Statist, p. 469.
10. According to Statistisches Handbuch des Deutschen Reiches the expenditures for armaments during the years of Nazi rule in peacetime were as follows:
Fiscal Year Arms Budget Total Budget
(billions of marks) (billions of marks)
1933–34 1.9 8.1
1935–35 1.9 10.4
1936–36 4.0 12.8
1937–37 5.8 15.8
1938–38 8.2 20.1
1939–39 18.4 31.8
11. Cf. IMT XV, pp. 385 f. (General Jodi’s testimony, with the remark about the “ridiculous’’ reserves; in the same context Jodi also stated that “actual rearmament had to be carried out after the war began.”) Also Hans- Adolf Jacobsen, Fall Gelb, pp. 4 ff. On the munitions situation cf. i.a. Halder, Kriegstagebuch I, p. 99. On September 1, 1939, the strength of the Luftwaffe was: 1,180 bomber planes, 771 single-engine fighter planes, 336 dive bombers, 408 twin-engine fighters, 40 ground attack planes, 552 transport planes, 379 reconnaissance planes, and 240 naval aircraft. By the end of 1939 an additional 2,518 aircraft were built; in 1940, 10,392; in 1941, 12,392; in 1942, 15,497; in 1943, 24,795; in 1944, 40,953; and even in 1945, 7,541 planes were produced. See Hillgruber, Strategie, p. 38n.
12. Alan S. Milward, in his German Economy at War, was the first to show that the concept of blitzkrieg arose out of more than merely tactical considerations, that it was a method of waging modern war that took account of Germany’s specific situation. Cf. also Le Testament politique de Hitler, pp. 106 ff.
13. This is the explicit or implicit thesis of Fritz Fischer and his school; see particularly Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht and Krieg der Illusionen; Helmut Bohme, Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht; Klaus Wernecke, Der Wille zur Weltgeltung. But see also, for in some cases highly controversial views: Egmont Zechlin, “Die Illusion vom begrenzten Krieg,” in: Die Zeit, September 17, 1965; Fritz Stern, “Bethmann Hollweg und der Krieg,” in: Recht und Staat, Heft 351/352; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, “Die deutsche Kriegszielpolitik 1914–1918,” in Juli 1914, the German edition of the Journal of Contemporary History, Munich, 1967; and, above all, Karl Dietrich Erdmann in the introduction to: Kurt Riezler, Tagebucher, Aufsatze, Dokumente, pp. 17 ff.
14. Heinrich Himmler in one of his speeches in Posen (October 4, 1943); Himmler was unquestionably reflecting Hitler’s view as it emerged around this time in, for example, the table talk, and was expressing it in concentrated form; IMT XXIX, p. 172 (1919-PS).
15. Otto Hintze to Friedrich Meinecke; cf. Die deutsche Katastrophe, p. 89.
1. IMT XXXVII, pp. 466 if. (052-L).
2. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch I, p. 98; cf. also pp. 93 ff. General von Leeb, commander of an army group, spoke of the “insanity of an attack.” See Jacobsen, Fall Gelb, pp. 50 f. Von Leeb also commented on Hitler’s “appeal for peace”: “So the Fuhrer’s speech in the Reichstag was only lying to the German people.” For the alternative of “putting the war to sleep,” cf. the sketch that General Jodi wrote in Nuremberg on “Hitler as a Strategist,” printed in: Kriegstagebuch des OKW (KTB/OKW) IV, 2, p. 1717. For the officers’ opposition during this period as a whole cf. Harold C. Deutsch, Verschworung gegen den Krieg, pp. 71 ff.
3. Heinz Guderian, Erinnerungen eines Soldaten, p. 76. The Hitler speech cited here has been preserved in several largely consonant versions. One of the two versions used here is Nuremberg Document PS-789 (IMT XXVI, pp. 327 ff.); the other is N 104/3 in the Freiburg im Breisgau military archives; its probable author is Helmuth Groscurth.
4. Churchill, The Second World War II, p. 74.
5. F. Halder, Kriegstagebuch I, p. 302.
6. Lieutenant General Alan Brooke, quoted in Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, p. 147.
7. Cf. Gibson, The Ciano Diaries, pp. 191, 192, 225, 332. For the following letter from Mussolini to Hitler see Hitler e Mussolini, Lettere e Documenti, p. 35.
8. Gibson, The Ciano Diaries, pp. 235–36.
9. Ibid., p. 267. The preceding remark is cited in Raymond Cartier, La seconde guerre mondiale I, p. 137; cf. also Michaelis and Schraepler, XV, p. 150.
10. So Albert Speer has informed the author; cf. also the above-mentioned sketch by Jodi in KTB/OKW IV, 2, pp. 1718 f., who also, incidentally, credits Hitler with the timely development of a 7.5 -centimeter antitank gun.
11. Heiber, Lagebesprechungen, p, 30.
12. Gibson, The Ciano Diaries, p. 266.
13. Cf. the description in Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 331.
14. Nolte, Epoche, p. 435.
15. Meinecke, Briefwechsel, pp. 363 f. The Opposition went into a deep depression. Ulrich von Hassell’s diary (Vom anderen Deutschland, pp. 156ff.) speaks of “badly shaken minds” among Oster, Dohnanyi, Guttenberg, and also Goerdeler. Von Kessel, he says, was “wholly resigned and would like to study archaeology.” An anonymous acquaintance in the Opposition camp proved to be representative of a widespread mood: he was “inclined to believe that a man who achieved such successes must be walking with God.” Von Hassell himself summed up the inner conflict of many conservative Oppositionists in the phrase: “One might feel desperate under the tragic burden of being unable to rejoice in such successes.” For the following episode at Bruly-le-Peche see Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 170 f.
16. This was Article 8 of the agreement, stating: “The German government solemnly declares to the French government that it does not intend to employ for its purposes those vessels of the French navy now in ports under German control.”
